No Choice

It's a wonder to Jack why he doesn't feel that normal ball of fuzzy, warm happiness that comes from cocooning himself up into his sheets and hiding himself away from the world under layers of down, cotton and silk. Instead of hidden, faint shadows of morning light and the happiness of his own stored bodily warmth he awakes with a slight backache and even the beginnings of a headache that only begin to calm once he's tossed and turned and untwisted himself from the caging sheets and turned them over, eventually finding his phone tucked away between the folds of his blanket.

Pitch and their earlier battle comes to mind straightaway and Jack can't stop his fingers or hands in time to consider the early time of day. He doesn't want to wait another minute to begin clearing things up with Pitch, he doesn't want Jamie or anything else to stand in-between him and his 'beau', as he had always mentally noted him.

He calls multiple times but the answering machine answers him and every time the signal noise to leave a message beeps he grows more worried that maybe Pitch has decided that he's done with him and had his fun with the Frost boy, maybe he's moved on to other people who were closer to his age with less 'baggage'. He doesn't leave messages for Pitch to pick up, he just hangs up and tries again, going upset with each re-dial.

He attempts to connect to his boyfriend again, this time unsure of whether to be frustrated or depressed. His mind concocts multiple scenarios of Pitch intentionally ignoring his calls, completely forgetting him and refusing to acknowledge his presence in favor of someone else – someone who he'd say was better.

His stomach turned itself inside out in an upset wave of nervous nausea and he lurched forward, dizzy and unbalanced. He squints his eyes as he realizes he's doubled over and then leans against the bed for support, phone still ringing in his ear.

Then its picked up and his ears perk upwards, listening intently for any sign of Pitch.

'...What happened?' The voice is low, tired and slightly disturbed but through the grogginess of early morning anguish Jack could tell right away; it was Pitch.

"Oh thank God." Jack releases an exhale as he speaks and dives back under the covers, lying on his stomach and kicking his feet in an even rhythm. "I actually got physically sick.." It's said in retrospection and abrupt understanding – he had worried himself sick about things that he, himself, had thought up. 'Now I know how you feel...' There was a twinge of sympathy as Jack remembered how Pitch had told him of his troubled thoughts, that Jack would leave him for another person or just leave him in some way.

'Oh, are you alright? What happened?' Pitch voice gains urgency and through the phone Jack can hear the shifting of weight on a familiar sounding bed followed by the pulling and click of a lamp's light switch.

"Oh, I'm fine I'm not in danger or something, if that's what you mean. I just..." Jack blushed from how silly he was sounding, not able to believe it himself. "I think I worried myself sick over you just now, like...literally I was nauseous and everything. Stupid right?"

'Oh you poor thing...' Jack isn't sure from the tone alone whether Pitch is feeling sympathy for his plight or poking fun at him from a higher point of comparison. 'If it relaxes you any I was dreaming of you...'

Jack presses his face into the sheets and whispers sorrowfully. "I woke you up didn't I?"

'Yes something like that, the earliest I usually awake is at about 7:30...'

"My bad...what time is it now?" Jack felt a strange sense of depressed guilt boil up inside of his chest. Pitch had a job, a life, things to do, while he was sitting around moping about how he had nothing to do. He felt as if he was using his boyfriend as an excuse to avoid trying to get more pro-active in his own life.

'A too early for human conversation, 6:12 A.M.' Pitch was spent with a drifting accent of fatigue in his voice that was unbecoming of him, his words sounded aggressively sharp at the edges.

'Probably upset because nothing bad's happened...' Jack thought, scratching the back of his head. It made sense; Pitch had personally chauffeured Jack home, fearful for the young man's safety to the point of staying behind to see that he made it inside the house safely and didn't come running back out in terror. For a moment there, Pitch was likely as worried about his safety as much as Jack was worried about the safety of their relationship.

"Damn." Jack feels his body itch in irritation and weariness but luckily it soon leaves and dissipates into the background. He feels awkward and out-of-place, he never remembered, once in his life, not getting any sleep through the night and staying up til six in the morning doing nothing but worrying.

Last night and through to this morning he didn't remember dreaming or sleeping in the slightest and exhaustion wasn't the main thing his body was feeling now, it was a level of fright mixed with a swirl of panic that he couldn't describe. Like knowing somewhere, a train was going to hit someone and not knowing where the train was or who it was going to hit. "Well, I'm sorry for waking you up so early. I just wanted to apologize for my really..." He paused to find a word and his tongue twirled in his mouth, searching for the right one.

Aggressive? No, there was no aggression in his silent rebuttal to Pitch's off-handed comments about Jamie. Defensive? Not really, except perhaps for Jamie's sake. He couldn't think of something that fit that same level of emotion – that sense of 'Don't you dare say that again' that he felt in those brief, passing moments.

Inwardly, Jack was screaming as he attempt to make his way through the rest of his sentence. "Out of place behavior yesterday." By the time the words were able to crawl up his throat to leave his mouth he was wishing to have this entire phone call finally end so he could return to sleep – it felt too awkward bringing up Jamie again, so early in the morning. It was as if he was starting the day off on the wrong foot.

'It's fine, it's clear you still have some feelings for Jamie that I can't interfere with.'

Wow, wait, what?

"No, wait Pitch it's not like that – we, or at least maybe me because Jamie's just acting really fucked up and weird right now, I have no idea what that's abo- it's just I don't have any romantic feelings for Jamie he's not, like...stable in the head I think." Jack stumbled his way through his rant and face palmed by the end, only to go back and try to redact his words.

'You do realize...'There was a tangible level of concern dripping from his tone. 'that I never said the feelings between you two were of the romantic persuasion?'

"Well when you say it like that, it does imply..." Jack sighed aloud and felt a familiar wave of aggravation wash over him. If any equally shared romantic feelings between him and Jamie were in existence, it was unbeknownst to him. He didn't feel the same level of sexual or emotional attraction with Jamie that he felt when he was with Pitch. There was no 'spark' to the flame between them, at least not for him at this time. Maybe, previously, in the past before Jamie began what seemed to be his descent into madness and jealousy, there was something there. But not now.

Now it was more about both the memories of their lost friendship and the queerly off-balance, one-lopsidedness of their current 'relationship'. He had a sort of 'friendly' love for Jamie, nothing romantic about it but at the same time he wanted Jamie in his life, he wanted the Jamie he remembered sharing afternoons complaining about stupid things with, the one he remembered having snowball and play fights with.

The one he had in his life now was an obnoxious, overly coquettish pig. "And besides you already say you worry about us as a couple – it's just where you seemed to be heading. I guess. I don't know much about anything any more." Jack's skin itched and crawled with a disgusting tingling sensation running underneath, like thousands of spiders were burrowing into and throughout his flesh, whenever they spoke about Jamie and his attempt at forcing entry into their relationship.

'I've never been all that sure about anything to begin with.' Jack sensed from the far away drifting of his tone that it wasn't an agreement or a declaration – Pitch had turned inward towards himself and looked back in a moment of brief self-retrospection. His words were not a deviation from their original subject but instead a 'I know where you're coming from, I've been there'. 'But I'm sorry for wording it like that, you're completely right. I..lead the conversation a certain way. My apologies.'

"It's fine, I understand..." Jack said, expecting some type of subject change to come from Pitch – but nothing came through except the sound of hazy, even breathing.

He hated when things reached this point, when they were caught up and all apologies were said and they couldn't just jump and latch onto a new subject without it getting slightly more awkward then he could handle.

"W-well I'm gonna let you go okay? I've held you up enough for now I think. You should...try to get some rest or something."

'Too late for that I'm afraid. I'm awake.' More bed shifting and the sound of a light groan worries Jack that perhaps Pitch didn't not get his required hours of sleep due to the disturbance and could doze off at an inconvenient time – say while driving. He knows that it is purely due to his own mothering instincts, re-awakened by being back in the family home with Mary but he can't put his worries to sleep.

"Okay, well take it easy alright?" He didn't want to mother Pitch or nag him, if there was anything he didn't want to be it was a nagging lover, but he wanted to take care of him and with his current mood he couldn't help but think that any negative outcome was an assurance instead of a possibility.

'Do you want me to come pick you up and bring you back home? You have another...two days off, you realize that?'

"But I'm already feeling better..." Jack pouted lightly and got up, deciding that perhaps today he would begin his day early and properly prepare before anyone in the house woke up, thinking that it would somehow give him an edge or advantage over the rest of the world.

Over the phone, Pitch was snickering and heaving out dry laughs and snide comments. 'Ah! What a unique teen you are m'dear, actually pleading to get back to school. Tell me, are things actually that boring there?'

"Yes actually, I mean...it's not that it's boring, it's more that so far there's nothing to be afraid of, or so it seems." Bundle of clothing in hand Jack has already begun filling up the tub and locking the door behind him, not exactly wanting to take a bath but deciding it was less noisy then the shower and therefore wouldn't intrude with his calling Pitch. "Of course, I could be wrong."

'Yes and I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you this but keep an eye on them.' From the faint rustling and sound of rapid movement he heard, Jack presumed that now Pitch was readying for his own day.

"Yeah, they could probably change at the drop of a hat." Jack groaned, laying against warm porcelain in a filled, warm tub of water. It calmed him more then he expected and he remembered; it had been weeks since his last bath.

'Not because they could change at any moment Jack but because you want to be there when they do change, if they do change, so that they can't hurt Mary.'

"Being there when they do change is no guarantee that I can stop them, Pitch. But you are right." Jack mumbles, inattentively staring over the side of the tub at the bathroom tiles below. Not searching but looking. "I wonder what triggers the change."

'Withdrawal symptoms, probably. Keep in mind that most addicts come to their addiction to get rid of some sort of heavy, painful burden or to just forget how fucked up they think their own lives are. When everything starts to hurt again because they've stopped indulging in their substance or behavior its just basic instinct to run back to what took away their pain in the first place.' Pitch snorted. 'Or at least, what they believe took it away.'

"Withdrawal..." Light, partly attached sympathy floats in his heart for his parents – he didn't know very much about alcohol or its effects on the human body but he could see their pain and suffering both with and without the beer and wine in their systems.

As much hell as they were to be around when they were drunk, it must have been hell for them when they weren't.

And maybe when they were? Jack couldn't tell and didn't bother trying – he wasn't a doctor like Pitch and he certainly couldn't tell what was going through his parents head's at all time.

'The more addicted you are, the harder the withdrawal hits. Then, on the off chance you aren't the emotionally resilient type who can stand pain, you might end up taking more once the withdrawal hits – either out of stupidity or out of panic. Funnily enough, that usually raises your bodies resistance to whatever it is and then you'll need more and more just to maintain your addiction. Vicious cycle that.' Pitch pulled the phone away from his face so he could shimmy his way into some tight black jeans, only to realize that he didn't bring a shirt downstairs. By the time he figured out which one he wanted to wear, he didn't feel like going upstairs. 'Might as well stay down here and brew some coffee.'

"Any way to avoid it?"

'Not anyway I know of, especially if the addict in question thinks they need their addiction.' Pitch laughed in a sense of self pity and stared down at his coffee, giving it a guilty smile. 'In which case the attachment is emotional – they could feel like their life or livelihood is in danger if its taken away from them, they could react violently, they could endanger their own lives and the lives of others...'

"Yeah I'm getting a sense that any attempt to 'help' them along their path to sobriety is a lost cause now."

'By help, what do you mean? Because if you're suggesting a violent takeover of every bar in town, I'm game darling.' Pitch chuckled joyously and then gave a toast on Jack's behalf, not minding the fact that Jack wasn't here and probably wasn't nearly as much of an avid coffee drinker as he was. Nevertheless he smiled happily as he took a small sip and stood by the window, watching the early sun rise and the clouds go by.

"Ah! Sorry, I don't feel like between hunted down by every drunkard in a five mile radius – I've already got my hands full with two." His following laughter was loud and self-pleasing, uncaring of whether or not his parents or sister could hear him. Humor wasn't something they had shared enough of, considering everything else that was assaulting their lives so when he got the chance to laugh along with Pitch, he'd take it. "I'm just worried there won't be any change this time. I'll come home from school and they'll be strewn out on the floor, drunk as balls."

'If they change I'd actually be little more afraid.'

"Join the club." Jack chuckled, smile on his face wider then what it normally would've been given the situation. "We're recruiting new members, you get free white-chocolate strawberry shortcake cookies when you do. Seriously speaking, why would the change be bad though?"

'Because Jack, people who reform their current addictions have a habit of forming new ones to deal with the cravings.'

"Well, maybe they're different from your patients – not saying they are but even you were surprised when we found out they were taking Mary to school now." Jack stood up and left the bath, set on getting ready for the rest of his morning.

'True Jack but that wasn't 'professional' knowledge. I have experience with addiction, not alcohol but something else.'

There was a moment when he thought he'd misheard but then he pressed the phone closer, blinked a few times and squinted. Hearing Pitch admitting to be, at least at one time, in the same position and place his parents were currently in, threw him for a loop. Ever since the day they'd met and he learned about Pitch's past he had kept a perfect, pristine image of him. Pitch, a hurt man with a broken heart and a lost daughter, was sacred in his mind. Not unlike a shrine or an altar of an ineffable figure, Jack's opinion of Pitch was that he was, in a sense, absolutely incorruptible.

Which made this something he couldn't ignore. "You, you were addicted to something?" 'Out of everyone I know, you?'

'Jack, I thought I told you?'

"I'm pretty fucking sure I'd remember you telling me you're an addict." And that was all the information Pitch needed to know about how Jack felt at the moment. A curse of anger, a withering note of betrayal and a twinge of heart-brokenness.

'A reformed addict, I don't quite indulge anymore. I've pulled myself out of it.' He attempted to douse the flames before they started, hoping Jack would understand.

"Oh? What got you out then?" Jack said, skeptical and annoyed. It felt like Pitch had just pulled something completely out of nowhere just to blindside him.

'Physical injury and...Sanderson and speaking of whom, here he comes now.' Pitch grimaced at the ugly, hideous 'thing' that was otherwise known as Sanderson's car that was making its way through the long road and towards his home.

He respected his friend but if there was anything he despised it was the overly bright school-bus shade of godawful yellow that he trashed his car with. He remembered actually having to drive to work with him once – he felt embarrassed for his friend instead of just for himself.

"Book guy?"

'Yes, I'm afraid. Tell you what, if he's actually snatching me off someplace I can pick you up and take you with us – maybe you two can finally move past 'book guy' and whatever he calls you when I'm not around...'

Jack almost said no, almost, but when he realized that Pitch didn't tell him what his addiction was to begin with, he felt he was obligated to come. His curiosity pushed him along to hurry, get some food together and get dressed. He needed to know what it was that Pitch struggled with in the past – what was it that his beloved hiding place from the rest of the world, the man who he thought he could run to at the slightest hint of trouble and get nothing but love and care from, was addicted to?

Drugs? Alcohol? Pain? Everything was likely to be an addiction for Pitch, a man who lived entirely alone in the woods with no police or public interference, a high paying job and – Jack assumed – access to a number of drugs thanks to his medical background and attachments to other local professionals?

He couldn't stop himself from standing at the door, staring at the window and nervously, anxiously bouncing in place – Pitch was still 'on' the phone but he wasn't saying anything, still shaken by the fact that Jack didn't know and still couldn't tell what his addiction was. 'I suppose I haven't exactly been the most forthcoming about my past – even with Seraphina out in the open...' He headed by upstairs to get a loose black or dark purple shirt on before leaving – hoping that whatever Sanderson was about to force him to do was something that involved large amounts of sitting down and doing nothing.

"I'm waiting by the door." He half-sung, pouting and wondering when Pitch could possibly get here. It was more a declaration of 'I'm still waiting for an answer', then any attempt to make conversation.

'Sanderson's being obnoxious.' Pitch mused, voice in a sing song that playfully mocked Jack's own while Sanderson forced him to pile into his own car – something Pitch appreciated. There was many things he would do in life, if the need arose but under no circumstances would he pick Jack up in a moving machine that was brighter then a healthy sunflower.

"Where are we going?" Jack felt like the decision of Pitch's past life was something they couldn't talk about over the phone – he wouldn't have the strength to believe it otherwise.

'If I knew, I'd be telling you. Sanderson's kind of an asshole about these thin- ow. No need to pinch, I'll follow – but we have to pick Jack up first okay?'

"Yeah I'm all dressed up and ready for you, if it helps."

'By now I would usually be making a dirty joke but I have to hang up. I'm not a fan of talking on the phone while driving.'

"Yeah I understand. I'll wait for you on the porch."

'I'll be there in twenty minutes tops love.' He sounded stable, unworried and almost entirely care-free but in truth, Pitch was a bit fearful; he didn't realize that he had never told Jack about his addiction (or the young man forgot, either way the information needed to be retold to someone).

He didn't need to wonder why Jack seemed so antsy and nervous, he just found out that his boyfriend of about a mouth used to have the same problems his abusive parents did. 'Please do try not to worry about me until I get there.' He quickly added as he buckled his seat belt and settled in, watching a familiar golden friend of his scramble his way upwards into his own seat. It was meant only to make Jack calm down and he was confident that Jack wouldn't apply it to what he was saying now but rather the conversation they had earlier.

"See you soon." Pitch sensed the distinct, sharp lack of care and emotion that usually loaded that phrase – Jack's farewells and greetings always carried with them a twinge of sorrow and delight, respectively. This was loaded with nothing but a feeling of patient anxiousness and curiosity.

Looks like they were going to have even more talking to do when the time came...

'Of course milove.' He bade Jack farewell before hanging up the phone and relaxing his nerves, he had a good feeling he had a-lot of explaining to do in the near future...

–

Sophie stared at her own visage in the mirror, goosebumps appearing up and down her arms and legs. Gazing into her own reflection, it was as if there was some type of twisted creature in her flesh that was controlling her, wearing her like an old suit, forcing her to do the very things she feared most in life, things she'd never do if she was in another other type of position. In a moment of confusion she placed her hand over her cheeks and felt her own skin, trying to see if maybe she'd grown sick or had some disease.

But there was nothing to be found. Nothing to blame the guilt or shame she felt on; what she was doing was her choice, her fault and all her. No outside influences were controlling her beyond her own will - her will to give her brother whatever he wanted to please him.

Saying no to Jamie meant breaking his heart and saying yes to her morals meant having to say no to Jamie – but she couldn't break his heart. Not like this and not with Jack who was at this point, for all intents and purposes, the overseer of all of Jamie's actions.

She was at a dilemma; she could choose to be comfortable with herself, confess the plot to the Frost parents or choose to hopefully help Jamie feel just a little bit better about himself. With little to nothing giving her away she stood up and prepared herself to get ready for school, already knowing that she wouldn't be able to focus on any of the work until after her decision was made and the deed was done.